Tourism Ireland launches new Middle East website

Tourism Ireland has launched a new and improved website for its GCC audience with an exclusive competition for one lucky winner to experience a ‘road-trip-of-a-lifetime’ along Northern Ireland’s most famous coastal route.

Enhancing Tourism Ireland’s online presence in the region, the new website has been developed in response to growing interest in travel to the island of Ireland from the Middle East market. The local site provides comprehensive, up-to-the-minute information for Middle Eastern visitors with culturally curated exclusive content.

The ‘Jump into Northern Ireland’ road-trip-of-a-lifetime competition offers one lucky winner and guest a one week road trip to take in sites such as the multi-million pound Titanic Belfast Visitor’s Centre and the extraordinary Giant’s Causeway UNESCO World Heritage Site, whilst enjoying the scenic car routes of the Causeway Coast along the way.

Thomas Redmond, Tourism Ireland’s representative in the Middle East, commented:
“Tourism Ireland is revving-up its online promotional activity in line with increased interest we are seeing from the Middle East in travel to the island of Ireland, as visitor numbers continue to increase month by month from the GCC market.”

Tourism Ireland’s global social media presence has more than 1.24 million fans on Facebook – it is the second most popular tourism board, after Australia, on the social networking site. Having such a huge fanbase is significant because each fan has an average of 200 friends, making Tourism Ireland just one degree of separation (or just one click away) from having its message shared with 250 million people around the globe.

“As well as providing users with an enhanced visitor experience on our website, we are also continuing to develop our regional social media presence. Our Facebook and Twitter fan growth remains steady, and we will continue to prioritise our digital growth strategy in our regional marketing activity.”

The competition, which runs until August 29th 2013, includes:
– Return flights to Belfast from the UAE
– Seven days exclusive car hire
– Two nights B&B accommodation at some of Northern Ireland’s top hotels: The Merchant Hotel, Belfast; The Bushmills Inn; and accommodation in Derry-Londonderry courtesy of Hastings Hotels
– Two admission tickets to the world’s largest Titanic visitor experience, Titanic Belfast

“The competition embraces all that Northern Ireland has to offer, including the first-ever UK City of Culture 2013, Derry-Londonderry, which has been impressing international visitors with its strong line-up of events,” said Thomas Redmond.

“The winners will be able to enjoy Northern Ireland’s stunning greenery and natural beauty all from the privacy of their car, driving into the heart of it to experience not only the new and modern, but also some of the area’s oldest sites too.”
Special offers and packages will be rolled-out on the site, available to GCC residents exclusively, with the capacity to deliver more sales leads and referrals to tourism partners.

Özgür Töre is the founder and managing editor of award-winning travel news website; Focus on Travel News – ftnNEWS.com and Arab Turkish Travel Gazette – www.arabturkishtravel.com. Mr. Töre is the co-founder of RusTourismNews.com and UkraineTravelNews.com
Mr. Töre is a board member of Association of Tourism Writers and Journalists (TUYED) in Turkey and International Tourism Writers Alliance.
He holds a Master’s Degree in Project Management from Istanbul Kültür University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the Istanbul Bilgi University.